Who doesn’t love a little chocolate on their pillow? It’s a nice touch that tells guests, “We’re glad you’re here.”
(Sure, it’s played out, but if ain’t broke, don’t fix it.)
Consider your hotel blog as an opportunity to say the same thing. And since a blog post could be your guest’s first interaction with you, why not give them some seriously alluring flavour they’ll remember?
Too many blogs are dry, dull, and whipped up in an afternoon of drudgery because it’s just ‘what you do’.
Your readers can absolutely tell. That’s why they hop on over to the hotels that greet them with a luxury Belgian truffle, not a sticky old After Eight half glued to the pillow.
What are we trying to say? Good blog copywriting for hotel websites = more paying guests!
But how exactly? Let’s get into the weeds and explain, so you can start sprucing up this guest-grabbing asset.
Photo by Tuğba Kobal Yılmaz on Pexels.com
The 3 Ways A Good Hotel Blog Could Be the Best Marketing Decision You Ever Make
A well-watered blog is the garden that keeps on giving. They call this kind of content ‘evergreen’ for a reason. Here’s the big trifecta to get you onside:
1. Truly good blog content is a ‘set and forget’ marketing asset that generates passive leads for years and years and years….
God loves a trier, as they say. And in the competitive world of hotel SEO, Google is the almighty. When you put out genuinely insightful, helpful and engrossing blogs, you’ll rank higher on search engines. That means your brand will be shown to prospects over any lazy bones competitors who churn out slop.
2. Blogs help you become THE ONE prospects turn to
It’s an extension of the above, but you want to become your locale’s or industry’s ‘wizard’. Blogs that demonstrate your mesmerisingly deep knowledge on a given topic help you assume the position of ‘one who knows best’. And you’ll enjoy the magnetism that comes with it.
Once you’ve successfully donned this enviable pedestal, you’ll have created a moat around your business, filled with crocodiles ready to gobble anyone who dares try to intercept your marketing. In other words, it helps galvanise your steady flow of guests against competition. Who doesn’t love reliable, safe income streams? Publish a good hotel blog with quality SEO, become untouchable — hurrah!
3. Quality blog content makes one action do the work of ten
With a strong, high-value hotel website blog post, you can repurpose that content across multiple platforms. Turn it into a YouTube video, a tweet storm, an Instagram carousel, a podcast — you name it. You can slice and dice and chop and switch angles and segments. Then, pollinate that goodness across all corners of the internet — with your name on it and without investing the time and money to do it over and over again. Leverage baby!
Sold on blogs for your hotel website? Sweet. Now you just need to know what to write about. Well, that’s no problem either.
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How To Come Up With Winning Hotel Blog Ideas That Your Next Batch of Guests Will Eat Up
To unearth wicked blog ideas that absorb your audience, don’t waste your brain power staring at the clouds. Let the market dish you the ideas.
Start by listening closely to your guests. What topics do they rave about?
What unique features of your location draw their interest? That’s your endless well of confirmed golden ideas.
People also chat on the internet (in case you don’t know), so you can pluck ideas from forums and keyword research.
Tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush reveal what potential guests are searching for online related to your area.
Combine these strategies to identify themes that resonate and voila!
For example, if guests marvel at local hiking trails, a post like “10 Breathtaking Hikes Near Mexico City Nobody Talks About” could be a runaway hit.
It’s all about merging guest interests with travel and hotel SEO insights to create delectable, search-friendly content.
When it comes to putting in the legwork of writing phenomenal blogs, you might be looking for ways to get the goods quickly and cheaply.
And unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you’ve heard of one possible life ring: ChatGPT.
Can You Use ChatGPT for Hotel Blogs Without Turning Your Brand Into Grey Mush?
Ahhh AI, the best thing since cotton sheets, right? ChatGPT isn’t technically AI, but who cares? It does stuff your own brain would rather not bother with. Very seductive.
We know what you’re thinking: “Why do It myself at all?”
Yes, it’s tempting to dump the blog load on one of these keen-bean language models. But hold up — that’s how you end up with copy that might impress a high-school English teacher, but not discerning guests who are reading your hotel blog and wondering if you’re the type of place they want to book for their once-per-year vacay.
Here’s where ChatGPT and its cronies fall short so you can avoid a similar fate:
- Substance – Since what guests really want to know about is the tactile and emotional experience of your service, ChatGPT can only guess — often poorly — because it can’t think or feel (yet!).
- Creativity – ChatGPT might cough up the odd zinger, but most of the time, you’ll get the same old ideas, analogies and metaphors that everyone and their mothers have milked dry.
- Specificity – Again, unless it’s been around your hotel and soaked in all the glorious details, it has no idea what it’s really like, and won’t be able to transfer that enthusiasm and richness to your readers.
This is all stuff you don’t want to skimp out on. When push comes to shove, you’ll get more convincing copy out of your maid than any soulless robot.
That said, these things are good for templates and outlines. They’ll also help tighten up awkward phrasing and shabby grammar. So get what you want to say from the horse’s mouth, and have ChatGPT polish.
In any case, they’re not the magic bullet you might have hoped.
The main problem is, unless you know what you’re looking for, you won’t simmer much gold from the mud.
And if you’re going to go to all this effort to have a great website, you’re not just shooting yourself in the foot by relying on ChatGPT, you’re going full Hemingway 😬 🔫
If you’ve got a spare 25 mins, we wrote a 3000-word opus on How Will AI Affect Copywriting & SEO. The TL;DR version? People buy from people. So write like a person, not a robot.
With your to-do list already stretching to the horizon, it’s time to play it smart.
If you’re looking to outsource your hotel copywriting to seasoned vets with serious skill and even better service, drop us a line and we’ll let you know if we can help.
